Ahead of its screening this evening in London's Irish Cultural Centre, Rachel Walshe retraces Bloom's steps through The Ulysses Project.
In watching The Ulysses Project, a re-telling of James Joyce’s most famous novel, I was struck by how quickly you can forget what it was like to live in a state-imposed lockdown. The panicked questions about how can we make art (specifically film) without the shared collective experience it takes, both to produce and to view. To paraphrase philosopher Jeff Goldblum: “Art finds a way.”
The plot of Ulysses is simple: people going about their day. This was the one thing most of us were urged not to do in 2020, to the point of being kept indoors, unable to move more than 5k from our homes.
Directed over WhatsApp by Laoisa Sexton and Trevor Murphy, The Ulysses Project features a cast of 75 actors, including a genuinely surprising addition in John Turturro, which (to my mind) speaks to the global scope of Covid’s effect on the film industry as a whole. Each actor filmed themselves self-tape style, most likely in their homes, unable to move as the film was shot during the “first foggy lockdown of 2020”.
The placelessness this evokes is, of course, a by-product of the necessity of distanced filming. However, it’s at odds with the fabric of the text. Joyce said of the novel, “I want to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book.” Dublin is as much a character in Ulysses as Leopold Bloom, and yet, of course, it wasn’t only Dublin or even Ireland that was going through the pandemic. And so, in the restriction of the framing, this new layer adds a universality to the film.
Without the aid of set or costume, it is the actors and the text that carry the film forward, although sprinkled throughout are moments of paint and props. One notable actor wore an eye patch, moving it seemingly at random from eye to eye. A drag element is introduced during the “Circe” retelling.
Ulysses, of course, pays homage to The Odyssey, which, although attributed to Homer, is part of the oral tradition of storytelling. In a sense, the pandemic set-up of self-tape recording is a perfect way of telling this story.
After a while, the connection achieved through the actors' eyes alone becomes truly powerful, eyes which often reflect the ring lights stuck just behind their camera. Connection is what storytelling is all about, largely what Leopold Bloom is craving in Ulysses and what we all sorely needed during Covid.
The range of performance is interesting. At times, it can feel a little like a step behind the curtain of the film industry, watching multiple actors audition for the same role. Some actors treat the text as script, others a dramatic reading. Some treat it as poetry. Some as “Joyce”.
Laoisa Sexton herself also took on multiple roles, genuinely creating a standout performance as Bella Cohen. However, this multi-rolling, along with the film's rapid edits, at times made the text, already complex and free-flowing, difficult to understand. But maybe this is just what it’s like to read Ulysses.
In order to overcome some of the challenges of stationary actors in blank spaces, co-director Trevor Murphy’s use of varying aspect ratios and an old film reel filter evoke Ireland of 1904. Soundscape is also pushed to help aid atmosphere, the lonely sound of the sea or hidden crowds helping to mask and yet also highlighting the film's solitary nature. There’s an interesting moment where a variety of Mr Deasys tell a variety of stunned Deadeluses that Ireland is the only country not to persecute the Jews, for the simple reason they never let them in. The use of Amhrán na bhFiann to underscore this section is a pretty spot-on counterpoint to the creation of a positive national narrative, and speaks to Joyce’s own thoughts on Ireland’s national identity.
While not always a fan of the scoring overall, finding some moments a little hand-holdy in terms of signposting how the audience should feel, choices such as this feel justified. On-screen text intermittently draws the audience's attention to the lyricism of Joyce’s prose. Interestingly, many of the moments chosen for adaptation focused on the absolute filthiness of the book, which teems with bodily fluids and urges. In the “Nausicaa” section, the female members of the cast share a private, collective orgasm that would have had Meg Ryan tugging on a waiter’s sleeve and saying, “I’ll have what she’s having.”
Again, the tension of the literal framing, an actor alone in a colourless room, and the edit, a chorus of “Oh”, makes The Ulysses Project such an interesting snapshot of Irish cinema. Like the novel it’s adapted from, it is situated so completely in a moment in time. There is something to the sexual undercurrent of the text, and the joy this adaptation takes in it, that also echoes lockdown; it was either all you could do, or actually illegal.
I watched the film alone in my bedroom, which to me paralleled how the film was shot. Meant for a moment when we could all come together again, and described as “hypnotic” when viewed on a cinema screen, I found my solitary viewing added to the intimate nature of the film. If anything, it felt like a novel approach to adapting a novel, which is a private experience between the reader and the author, and yet a collective experience (if the author is lucky enough).
It’s hard not to view while comparing 16th June 1904 with 16th June 2020, or to see this as the central tension being played with in The Ulysses Project. “History,” Stephen Deadelus says, “is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake”. In June 2020, Ireland was tentatively reopening after months inside. No one wanted to make anything that reflected this period, and we have largely moved on from the face masks and social distancing. 1904 was an Ireland before the national story had solidified. The pandemic was another moment of metamorphosis.
The Ulysses Project captures three Irelands in one: the past, the present and the imagined. Sometimes these intertwine. The film itself situates the conversation slightly differently. Opening with a quote from Virginia Woolf, calling the novel "An illiterate, underbred book", it acknowledges the book's banning in the US and UK on its tenuous publication in 1922. Shane McGowan puts an earthier spin on it. “This is rubbish. It means bugger all. It just sounds good”.
While celebrated today, the journey of Ulysses was not an easy one and neither was Joyce’s career as an artist. Joyce was a writer who held a mirror up to Irish society, and society didn’t like how it looked, leading Joyce to go into a self-imposed exile.
The Ulysses Project's final moments turn Molly Bloom’s famous “Yes” into something less erotic and more triumphant. This transformation gives the artists permission to make art, even in a snot-green sea of ‘No’. The film stands as a testament to the tenacity of artists, honouring a literary legend who, like many of us, knew rejection all too well.
The Ulysses Project will screen this Bloomsday in London's wonderful Irish Cultural Centre on 16th June at 7pm.
Tickets can be purchased here
The Ulysses Project features Omar Alma, Susan Ateh, Sebastian Beacon, Patrick Bergin, Donal Brophy, Ciaran Byrne, Liam Carney, Billy Carter, Ewan Chung, Jarlath Conroy, Rory Corcoran, Gina Costigan, Graeme Coughlan, Adrian Crowley, Lydia Darly, Cécile Delepière, Theo Dorgan, Hazel Doupe, Hilda Fay, Rosmary Fine, Olwen Fouéré, Eoin Geoghegan, Edward Gero, Vera Graziadei, Steve Gunn, Frances Healy, Liam Heslin, Johnny Hopkins, Suzie Houlihan, John Keating, Irene Kelleher, Aidan Kelly, Laura Knight, Nick Lee, Laurence Lowry, Andrew Lynch, Shane MacGowan, Kal Mansoor, Kevin Marron, Ian McElhinney, Ciaran McGlynn, Georgina McKevitt, Paula Meehan, Michael Mellamphy, Keshav Moodliar, Caroline Morahan, Elizabeth Moynihan, Mary Murray, Helen Norton, Kieran O'Reilly, Clara Onyemere, Derek Oppong, John Pirkis, Rachel Rath, Paul Reid, Erinn Ruth, Laoisa Sexton, Reece Skinner, Alan Smyth, Spider Stacy, Fiana Toibin, Barry Ward, Zoe Watkins, Sybille Wehrli, Olga Wehrly, Jenny Wills and Ali Zayn.
